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Efficiency of the Symmetry Bias in Grammar Acquisition

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 5457))

Abstract

It is well known that the symmetry bias much accelerates the vocabulary learning. In particular, the bias helps infants to connect objects with their names easily. However, grammar learning is another important aspect of language acquisition. In this study, we propose that the symmetry bias also would help to acquire grammar rules faster. We employ Iterated Learning Model, and revise it to include the symmetry bias. The result of the experiments shows that infants could abduce the meanings from incomprehensible utterances using the symmetry bias, and acquire the compositional grammar from a reduced amount of learning data.

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© 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Matoba, R., Nakamura, M., Tojo, S. (2009). Efficiency of the Symmetry Bias in Grammar Acquisition. In: Dediu, A.H., Ionescu, A.M., Martín-Vide, C. (eds) Language and Automata Theory and Applications. LATA 2009. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5457. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-00982-2_48

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-00982-2_48

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-00981-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-00982-2

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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